User digital communication addresses such as internet or IP addresses are conventionally associated with a fixed physical location, such as a user's business telephone line. However, portable communication devices such as laptop computers are becoming increasingly popular, and it is common for a user to access the internet from locations as diverse as hotel rooms and airplanes.
Digital communication networks are set up to route communications addressed to a communication address to the associated physical location. Thus, if a laptop computer is connected to a remote location, communications to and from the computer will not be associated with the user's communication address.
In order for a computer (host) to communicate across a network (e.g., the internet), software protocols (e.g., Transport Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)) must be loaded into the host. A host computer sends information (i.e., packets of data) to devices on the network (routers) which receive the packets and send the packets back to the destination host.
The destination host will route replies back using a similar process. Each host computer and router must be configured so it will know who to send the packets of data to. A router will receive the packets only if the host computers specifically send (address) the packets to that router. If a host is configured incorrectly (bad address), then the host computer and router will be unable to communicate.
With the advent of mobile computers (laptops) and the desire to plug them into various networks to gain access to the resources on the network and internet, a mobile computer must be configured for each network it plugs into. Traditionally this new configuration can be done either (i) manually in software on the mobile computer (usually causing the mobile computer to be restarted to load in the new configuration), or (ii) with a new set of protocols which must be utilized on the mobile computer to obtain the configuration information from a device on the network to which the computer is being connected. When new services (protocols) are created to add functionality to the host computers, these new protocols must be updated in the host computers or routers, depending upon the type of new functionality being added.